


He's gone and I buried him, and that's all there is to it.

by Glump



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season 4 Spoilers, don't watch if you haven't finished season 4, seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 02:21:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18769213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glump/pseuds/Glump
Summary: It doesn’t work. But at this point, everything is worth the try.





	He's gone and I buried him, and that's all there is to it.

**Author's Note:**

> Please do not read this story if you haven't watched season 4. It contains spoilers! 
> 
> The title of this story was taken from a Pablo Neruda Poem titled "A dog has died". 
> 
>  
> 
> Enjoy!

Everything aches, post Lucifer.   
Chloe forces herself to leave the penthouse and turn her back on the open balcony door. She texts Maze and Linda, expects Amenadiel to be in the know by proximity, and goes home.   
She half expects Trixie to greet her at the door and riddle her with questions but it’s late, and Trixie has school tomorrow, and she’s tightly tucked into bed when Chloe comes home. 

Chloe shrugs the jacket off, tries to shrug the rest of the day off, too, but it doesn’t seem to be quite that easy.   
She moves to the kitchen, steps in front of the sink. She pauses, resting her weight on the two arms she put on the kitchen counter, and lets her head hang. She feels like she aged at least twenty years today.   
One breath in, one breath out. That’s all she does for a moment, take breaths and slump and focus on not collapsing.   
Lucifer is gone, she saw him flap his wings and disappear into a world where she can’t follow.   
How does she explain this to her child? To her colleagues, to Dan or Ella? How does she face Maze?   
What will happen to Lux now?   
Maybe Maze will take care of that, she knows the business best. She’s handled it before, she can do it again. Post Lucifer.   
This is her life post Lucifer, she thinks.   
Her head aches and her eyes sting with dryness and there’s no use in staying up when she knows for certain that he won’t return, he won’t.   
So Chloe does the sensible thing. And she goes to sleep.   
It’s not easy, falling asleep with these images painted across her eyelids. But she makes it work, she has a daughter to take care of and a job to do and she can’t afford to run away again. And running away wouldn’t even make any sense because the only thing she wants to run to is Lucifer and that’s not an option.   
And Europe was kind of ruined for her anyway, what with the Priest and all of that. 

So Chloe sleeps. It’s the sensible thing to do. 

She wakes up with a stiff neck and cheeks that feel like parchment because she forgot to wash off the salt her tears left behind.   
When she slowly comes to her senses, she takes a long shower and hopes that the steam that rises will take the pain with it.   
It doesn’t work. But at this point, everything is worth the try. 

Trixie waits for her downstairs. She’s eager for breakfast and so completely clueless about what happened the night before that Chloe can’t help but wrap her arms around her.   
She doesn’t know how to explain.   
It’s hard but Chloe makes it through breakfast without saying a single word about Lucifer. Bless Trixie, who, today of all days, decides that a far more worthy breakfast topic would be the impending class trip.   
Bless Trixie, because her upbeat nature makes it seem like any other day. And if it were just any other day then Chloe would drop off Trixie at the bus stop and head into work just to find her ever dapper consultant leaning on the edge of her desk or fiddling with her highlighters.   
And she can keep the illusion going, acts like this is just any other day. It works, until there’s no Lucifer playing with her office equipment. 

Because this is her life post Lucifer, because he is gone, in hell, far away where she can’t go.   
She’s going to have to get used to that. 

The day passes without new cases and a whole lot of paperwork.   
Dan eyes her suspiciously every now and then and Ella pulls her to the side during her lunch break but for now she can just pretend like Lucifer’s too fed up with these boring tasks to show up.   
And she still hasn’t figured out how to break the news to her non-supernaturally-involved friends. 

After work she heads to the grocery store and grabs bell peppers and some eggs. It’s Saturday tomorrow and Trixie likes long omelet breakfasts on the weekend. And Chloe dreads the moment her mind will have nothing to do except think about Lucifer and she’s desperately trying to keep herself busy. 

Mentally she checks her to-do-list, wonders if she can somehow justify cleaning out the storage room that came with her apartment for the second time this week or if she should focus on wiping down all her kitchen cupboards instead. 

In the end she chooses to be weak and to falter under the pressure of all that has happened. 

She tucks her knees under her chin and her arms over her knees and sits in the corner of her bathroom while the shower runs and thinks about how everything is different now, she is different now. 

 

Months pass, half a year rolls past her before her steps grow lighter, little by little. Soon all the flowers bloom again and she’s sad to admit that it doesn’t hurt that much anymore, to live in a world he hasn’t ever seen. 

LA is different, everything is different – post Lucifer. She is different now. 

She soldiers on and the questions get less and less until one day Lucifer is just a guy in a fancy suit in some of the pictures that she keeps on her phone, next to selfies with Ella and a smiling and ever growing Trixie. 

She prays sometimes. She’d never done that before, but the time seems right, and the words roll heavy from her tongue and her chest creaks with the tension on heart. 

She prays to him, sometimes.   
This is her life post Lucifer. 

She will always take a second look when someone enters the room in expensive suits, with dark hair, with British slang or snarky comments under their belt. She will always turn her head when she hears the sound and feels the breeze of gushing wind. 

It’ll never actually be him. 

It can’t be. Won’t be. 

And she moves on and her steps fall lighter every day and one day, she will almost have forgotten who she was before.


End file.
